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About
DTB: A Message from the Editor
The
university environment exposes us to a variety of personalities
and ideas, but on a commuter campus, people often feel alienated
from each other and from the overall campus culture. It's
difficult to take advantage of what your campus has to offer
if you always have to rush straight to the parking lot after
class. It's hard enough just to get to class on time, let
alone find out that the person next to you in the elevator
is a great writer. But who knows? The person sitting behind
you in class might be your future favorite novelist or the
next [insert name of favorite poet]. If you aren't tuned
in to what other people are doing on campus, you're really
missing out.
That
situation is even more pronounced on the Brooklyn Campus,
which sits in the heart of New York and thus teems with
creative and interesting people. For this reason,
Downtown Brooklyn:
A Journal of Writing (ISSN 1536-8475) was founded in
1992 to showcase poetry and literary prose by Brooklyn Campus
writers. Since its first annual issue, the magazine has
included a wide variety of work in traditional forms as
well as more experimental styles. We have published undergraduates,
graduate students, full-time and adjunct faculty, and administrative,
clerical, and other staff from across the campus.
I
like to picture readers (especially undergraduates) picking
up the magazine and imagining that they could write poetry
or fiction. So I want them to see pieces that they can imagine
having written themselves. But all writers also need to
read difficult, inventive work that pushes them to grow.
Therefore, our aesthetic is eclectic. Our mission is not
to promote any particular style but all the different kinds
of writing being created on campus.
In
addition to the above, the magazine is also intended to
provide an internship space for graduate students in the
English Department (especially those in the Creative
Writing MFA program), who are encouraged to contact
me for further information about the possibility of volunteering
on the magazine's staff.
We
print 2000 copies of each issue, and a copy is sent to the
Director of every college and university Creative Writing
Program on the Associated
Writing Programs list. Copies are then distributed
to contributors and to the University community on a first-come,
first-served basis. Copies of the most recent issue are
available in the English Department. A full set of
back-issues of the magazine is available for your perusal
in the Periodicals Collection of Long Island University's
Salena
Library. In addition, in the Little
Magazine Collection of Memorial Library at The University
of Wisconsin (Madison), a full set is available to research
scholars. Finally, we are told that one or two back issues
are part of the onboard library of the cruise barge Esprit,
operated by French Country Waterways.
Finally,
I would like to thank Provost Gale Haynes, who has generously
funded the production of the magazine since its first issue.
We greatly appreciate her support.
Watch
the English Department blog (The
Longest Island) for the next call for submissions
(see guidelines here),
and for announcements of upcoming events, including the
annual reading by contributors to the latest issue, and
the publication of the new issue.
Wayne
Berninger, Editor
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